Mid winter progress

A quick visit to Cortes between Christmas and New Year revealed some nice new progress. Mike has built the steps off the front deck which are very comfortable both for walk/climbing and sitting on. The area in front of them will be a paved patio eventually.

And at the back we now have a nice concrete pad for the steps up to the back door. The treads and stringers will be of heavy lumber and Mike is working on them at present.

The weather was very mild and we were very cosy for the two nights we spent in the trailer.

Now we are back in the city where I hope to make a start on the spiral staircase...

Last day for 2011 - Nov 5th

It's my last day here on Cortes for this year and I took these shots to remind me of what Mike and I have built and of course, how much remains to be done.

Yesterday we installed the last of the siding and painted the corner trim on the upper back side (pic #2). So now we are beginning to see what the final colour scheme will look like.
The third pic shows the west side, the living room in the foreground and the bedroom behind with its little deck.

After I leave here, Mike will carry on with some concrete work and finishing trim.
And I'll be back here next April to start on the interior...

November 2nd

It's early November and yes, I'm still here on Cortes Island at May's Garden. But not for long... I will be leaving this weekend to head back to Vancouver for the winter.
Mike and I have been plugging away in the wind and rain, pushing to get the siding finished. At this point we are about one day away. Today we did the wall of the dining room, to the right of the french doors. Yesterday we finished up around the back door and did the final wall upstairs. (The plywood you can see on the lower roof is just there for safety and will be removed before the weekend.)
So it's down to the short strokes... for this year anyway. It feels great to have got to this stage and I can walk away knowing that, as Ulysses said, "Tho' much has been accomplished, much remains." 
(Actually he said, "Tho much is taken, much remains." in Tennyson's poem. But hey, this is Cortes, who cares;)

Doors!

Doors! After windows, getting the exterior doors installed is a major milestone on the road to that magical state called "lock up". Last Friday I drove down to Victoria to pick up our doors from the company there that has been making them. When I got there they told me they'd had a problem and the doors would not be ready until Tuesday afternoon.  Sooo... I decided to stay with my friends Dan and Naoko that night and head over to Vancouver for a couple of days on Saturday. It all worked out fine and yesterday I picked up the doors around 5pm, drove to Campbell River (3.5 hrs) and caught a late ferry to Quadra Island. I knew it was too late to get to ferry to Cortes but decided to stay at the Heriot Bay Inn and catch the first ferry in the morning. All went according to plan and I arrived home at May's Garden mid morning. Mike showed up soon after and together we installed three of the four door, saving the big french doors for tomorrow.
In the pictures you can see the upstairs deck door, the cute little bedroom door, and the main entry door -- yes we still need to build  deck for the main entry.

Still Siding - 2

With day after day of clear sunny skies the siding work is proceeding at a good pace. Not without a few hiccups though as we resolve the challenges of getting the corners to line up etc.
The two top pix are looking at the living room and bedroom walls on the ground floor and the west wall of the upstairs. The gable ends will remain with their tyvek covers until next spring when we'll finish them with cedar shingles.
At this point we have one more wall to do upstairs and one and a bit downstairs. So one more good day will see it finished!
Meanwhile, I had Robbie come back and dig a ditch for the generator electric feed to the house. The generator will be located at the workshop where we will have the freezer. The feed to the house is mainly for the fridge and for lighting etc.
Tomorrow, I'm heading for Victoria to pick up the exterior doors. There's rain in the forecast so it looks like a good time to go....
I feel a need to add a note here about what a joy it has been working here for the past week or so. The fall colours are spectacular and the sun has been warm enough during the day to work in just a T shirt.  I feel blessed!

Still siding

Siding is pretty much my full time occupation these days. We have a pretty good set up for cutting and installing the cement boards and it's going quite smoothly. I'm very pleased with the choice of pre-painted siding because the weather is marginal for painting and getting cooler by the day.

 

I did find time on the weekend to help David smoke some salmon in his newly built smoker. It's designed for cold smoking, so the fish gets smoked but not cooked.  We used a combination of apple wood, from the pruning I did last year, and cherry. Last night we vacuum packed about 50 bags of delicious smoked salmon!

Siding start...

Today we started installing the cement fibre board siding and this the first wall. We started at the back recognizing that there would be a learning curve in cutting and nailing the stuff. It is made from cement, fly ash and other stuff and comes in 12ft x 8 1/4" "planks". The planks are only 5/16" thick and quite heavy so a lot of care is needed in handling them or they will break. Cutting them is also tricky although Mike has a guillotine gadget that makes a nice clean cross cut. Ripping (cutting lengthwise) requires a table saw or skilsaw and generates lots of nasty dust that you really don't want to breathe. A good dust mask is essential.
But for all its "issues" the end result is very nice. We opted for the pre-painted version and chose this olive green colour. The vertical corner pieces will get painted the same colour as the siding. So a start has been made. Mike estimates about another 12 days to get the siding finished. With winter approaching, the push is definitely on...

Thanksgiving windows...

Thanksgiving weekend and Danielle comes to visit...  luckily we had one gorgeous sunny day that allowed us to get the window trim primed and painted. By choosing to paint it white we have minimized the less than elegant white vinyl windows.
Once we install the olive green siding, it should all look quite pretty.

For thanksgiving dinner we cooked a salmon and shared it with Julie and Eric, a couple we met on the ferry on Saturday. They are both school teachers in the Cowichan Valley and also musicians. So after dinner, the four of us played music together, Eric proving himself to be an excellent guitarist and Julie blessed with a beautiful voice. We felt like we had known these folks for a long time, and hope that we will!

The swamp monster of Kwas Park

It's Sunday. It's not hot. It's not cold. It's neither sunny nor raining. And it's very still...
I took an afternoon walk down to Kwas Park and took my camera along...
The swamp seemed to ask to be shot in both black and white and colour.






And then... I met the SWAMP MONSTER. With his big horn, wild grin and overly confident demeanour... I retreated.

Anyway, it started to rain.














On my way home I caught this view of a very nice house. The locals say the old guy who is building it is a nice guy but a bit strange;)

October 1st

Oh boy, September flew by and October is upon us. Luckily we had some nice dry days this week -- after the big storm --and managed to make good progress. Izaak has started work on the electrical wiring. Mike has been focusing on trimming out the windows with local cedar 2 x 4s and I've been working on soffits and the ceiling over the kitchen deck. We are using tongue and groove pine for the soffits, with a protective coat of Penofin oil on it. It looks fantastic!
At the end of the day Friday it was time to relax with a beer and survey the scene from my messy front porch. Just to put you in the picture... the blue plastic container is my drinking water. (I have running water from the lake system for washing but get my drinking water from David's well). In the basket you can see a few unhulled walnuts and in the jar behind some hulled ones. The plates are there because I forgot to put them in the sink to be washed after my lunch;) And the teak table is the same one we had had our house in Vancouver. I love it!

And finally... we have a decision on the colour of the siding. It will be a lovely shade of  olive green that will blend well with the exposed wood as well as the grey roof. It will also provide a nice contrast with the white windows and trim. Well done team for helping me make the decision!

The power is out/on

Today, the power went out around noon. It’s six o’clock now and it’s still off. But the real power has been on all day. The wind has been gusting over 100km an hour and the sea has been a spectacular thrashing, writhing, foaming force of liquid energy.

After spending a few hours at David’s place making dried apple slices and apple sauce, (we have lots of apples) I drove down to South Point and, ignoring the no trespass signs, followed a trail through the woods to the beach. A bicycle leaning against a tree told me I was not the only one with an urge to witness the stormy ocean close up and personal. I made my way down the steep path and clambered over a few logs to the rocky beach where the surf was pounding in pretty good.

Not like the west coast mind you, but for these sheltered northern Gulf waters, it was a pretty lively day.

I took some photos and sat on a log for a while just soaking it in. The other person was further down the beach and I had no wish to intrude on whatever meditation he or she was enjoying.

Then I walked back to my truck and drove back to May’s Garden and my still powerless trailer.

Luckily the propane stove does not require power so I have prepared a delicious dinner of refried beans, canned salmon, onions and carrots with a generous dose of curry powder to spike it up a bit. Mmmmm good!

It’s just after 6pm now and the sun is already sinking low. Fall is upon us it seems although the forecast for the next few days is quite decent. Which is good because I have a lot of work to get done over the next few weeks…   Oh! The power just came back on!

 

 

Log Splitter

A few weeks ago I ordered a manual log splitter from an on-line company and on Friday it arrived. It's an amazing tool. You place the log in a small cradle and then use the two long handles to operate the hydraulic ram that pushes the log against a metal wedge on the other end. The ram can exert a force of up to 10 tons!
I tried it on a variety of logs, big and small. It worked great. One of the handles has a "fast" speed and the other is slower. So you use the fast one to push the ram up to the log and then a combination of the two to force it against the wedge.
As you can see I managed to split a good little pile of firewood in the half hour or so I was using it.
And the wood shed is now full. Not that I have a stove yet to burn it in. That comes later in the building program...

Apples!

It was grey day with a gusty warm wind from the south. I spent most of it screwing the rainscreen strips onto the walls. These are the strips that the siding is fastened to and they create a 1/2" gap so that any moisture that penetrates the siding does not wick through into the walls. It's a long tedious job but hey, I'm an untrained worker what can I expect?
Anyway. eventually I ran out of strips (more being delivered tomorrow) so I went off to "pick" apples. My picking method is a bit crude in that I spread  a tarp on the ground and then take a long stick and shake the branches till the fruit falls. Yes there is some bruising but most of the apples are perfect -- and so good! I'm hoping to dry, freeze and preserve as many as possible, but I think I'll be giving quite a few away!
In  other news... the view from the living room window looks towards the apple tree. And the view from the kitchen sink is quite charming!

Windows!

Today the windows arrived and, with a couple of exceptions, were successfully installed.
Mike and Craig did the heavy work with the help of Jerome, the ever cheerful delivery truck driver and his amazing crane.
Most of the windows were just as ordered and went into their designated spots without a hitch.
One of the patio doors was too high however, and one of the windows just plain wrong. So it's going to take a little while to get that sorted out.
Nevertheless, this feels - and looks - like a major step forward on the construction path. 

September 13th

John was back at work today doing more landscaping and back filling. It makes such a difference to see the ground around the house assume a level and somewhat groomed aspect.He also moved some big rocks to line the driveway on the side opposite the walnut trees. I really like this look and hope we can add a few more rocks to create a real rocky road feeling! Meanwhile I am back at work and plugging away at installing the strapping that the siding will be attached to. It's slow tedious work but hey, what else do I have to do? Well actually I've also been working on getting quotes on our doors and it looks like there are indeed deals to be had.... Today was cloudy and cooler, a sign that maybe summer is indeed drawing to a close. But after the spell of weather we've just enjoyed, I don't hear anyone complaining.

 

Driveway

While I was away sailing John was busy grooming our driveweays with his Kubota digger. Many loads of sand have been dumped and smoothed out to create a level entrance and exit to our property.

He has not finished yet so these photos are of the work in progress.

It's going to be nice!